JOAN BAEZ: I AM A NOISE - Mark Reviews Movies

Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2023

One of the more popular of the folk musicians to emerge during the 1960s, Joan Baez could have reached the heights of some of her more famous peers, but she had better things to do, as well as some personal matters with which to contend. What's fascinating and admirable about Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is how it communicates the sense that we're just watching an everyday person—not someone whose music inspired so many ordinary people and fellow artists, a celebrated recording artist who sold millions of albums and whose career has resulted in a shower of awards, and an activist who was there and exposing herself to some danger during a tumultuous period of history.

Much of that, of course, comes from the film's subject herself, who has been publicly open about her opinions and views for decades, regardless of what people might think of those ideas and the way she holds herself in presenting them. Baez performed at the 1963 March on Washington. She marched with Black children in the South as schools were being racially integrated. She protested the Vietnam War, spending several days in prison and raised a newborn while her husband served a longer sentence for similar activism, and none of that diminished her certainty in or her passion for the cause.

When one thinks of her musical contemporaries, Bob Dylan comes to mind and, for sure, comes into play in the documentary, too. After all, Baez was one of his early supporters, one of his closest friends before he became famous, and maybe had some kind of romantic relationship with the troubadour, although it seems as if it was one-sided love affair if anything by Baez's own account. Dylan's great, of course—one of the most important and distinctive voices of American music. Can you imagine him, though, sitting down with filmmakers to speak so frankly and so humbly about his career, the times through which he lived, and the personal struggles that came from fame and all the consequences of it? It'd be great to be proven wrong, but that seems unlikely.

Here, though, Baez is like an open book—literally sharing her diaries and sketchpads with directors Miri Navasky, Maeve O'Boyle, and Karen O'Connor. No topic seems to be off-limits, although it is a bit questionable how the filmmakers maneuver around defining events of Baez's youth, as if lifelong trauma is some kind of twist that can only be revealed in the third act. When that discussion does emerge, the musician is just as honest as she is with everything else brought up in this film.

The structure of the documentary is one to which we've become accustomed. The filmmakers interview Baez about her childhood, her professional career, and her personal life. In between the interviews, we're treated to an account of her final tour, because Baez, nearly 80 when filming began, has come to realize she can't travel, maintain her energy, or even hit the high notes as she used to. As would be the case with pretty anyone, it's difficult to say that Baez is fine with these facts, but she has accepted them. When she steps on stage and sings and exits to the wings for a final time, there's a genuine feeling of catharsis here. How often do we actually get to witness a decades-long career come to an end with such a degree of intimacy?

If the film's structure and methods are routine, then, the sense of closeness to Baez, as she reminisces about the joys and troubles and accomplishments and private sorrows and hidden traumas of her life and career, more than compensates for that. We get the picture-perfect, for the most part, account of her childhood, being raised by Quaker parents into a life of world travel, social awareness, and charitable work, although her paternal Mexican heritage led to her facing prejudice at a young age. Sheltered and quiet, a young Baez started playing guitar and singing to chase away the isolation, anxiety, and sadness she still admits to feeling on occasion.

The rest of the narrative is a whirlwind of memories, supported by archival footage, those diary entries, assorted drawing, personal recordings, and some letters. Baez has boxes upon boxes of such materials, so the account is detailed.

What's vital, though, is how much of the information comes from Baez directly, the directors talk with her, listen to audio recordings of a younger sister named Mimi who tried to live up to her famous sibling, and talks with elder sister Patricia, who became estranged from her siblings in order to escape the pressure and insecurity of living in their shadows. When we realize that some of these interviews were filmed years before the tour that makes up most of the documentary's present-tense narrative, their impact takes on a different tenor.

Through it all, Baez comes across as grounded, thoughtful, and candid about everything—from professional matters to personal ones to the intersections of them. Her mental health issues become a constant through line, and Baez's frankness in speaking of them is admirable. The only exception, which is how a key piece of information about the family doesn't emerge until late in the film, has nothing to do with her and much, it seems, with evading editing on the part of the filmmakers.

There's the scope of a life and a person in Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, guided in a natural and seemingly unrestricted way by the subject herself. What else, really, do we need from a biographical documentary?

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